The First Twenty Years

Multimediale installation
Pavel Gudimov Art Center Ya Gallery Kiev
Organized on the initiative and in partnership with Goethe-Institut in Ukraine
Curated by Alevtina KakhidzeAfter forty two days of house arrest Xavier de Maistre wrote, “They have prevented me from going out into a town, a country – but they have left to me the entire universe”. In these 42 days de Maistre’s view of Things in his home changed. Is it possible that these things could have become our ENTIRE world to him? To become – OUR ENTIRE world – without us?.. What do we feel when Things gain such power? Confusion? Jealousy? But who gives the power to things? Us? Only 42 days, and the perspective on the usual shifts radically?

And what if we assume that all the first years of our lives were also constant short arrests that we spent in children rooms, if our parents forbade us to walk around town or suburbs at the very time when we wanted to? And what if there was no children room? A corner is enough to feel what Xavier de Maistre must have felt…

Though, it is possible that one must grow to be Xavier de Maistre to feel the same way.

What number can be used to count these years then? Tobias Rosenberger suggests number “20” – the first twenty years… This number is as abstract, as number “42” – the forty two days of Xavier de Maistre’s house arrest. Numbers don’t provide answer to the question what Things are to us – things with history, pretty, expensive, imported, Soviet, damaged, given as a present, new, ordered from abroad, stolen, bought with last money, things from childhood, Things… Numbers only point to the time between us and things – counted in hours, days, years…

To look at the Things from the first twenty years of his life, Tobias Rosenberger uses 4 surveillance cameras, 9 monitors and other modern media. Xavier de Maistre used to use the Word. But times change.

Artist’s Things were preserved by his parents in Aschaffenburg. Now they are part of the media-installation “The First Twenty Years”.

Alevtina Kakhidze, Muzychi, 2012

No other software used except Max6. One computer running 3 apps all created with Max streams a hybrid mixture of live-images from 4 surveillance Ptz-Cameras and pre-recorded sequences from these cameras onto nine screens in a second gallery space. Cameramovements, Speeds, Zooms etc. are synchronized to a midi score of Schubert's Trout Quintett.